Bernier’s voyage to the East indies.
223
the entering into this kingdom, after having paffed the mountains of Pirepenjale, ailthe inhabitants I faw in the firfl villages feemed to me to be Jews in their garb and.mein, and in fomething peculiar, which xnaketh us often difcern nations from oneanother. I am not the only perfon that hath had this thought; our father, the Je-fuit, and many of our Europeans had the fame before me. The fecond is, that Ihave obferved, that among the meaner fort of the people of this town, though theybe Mahometans, yet the name of Moufa, that is Moles, is much tiled. The third,,that commonly they fay, that Solomon came into their country, and that it was liethat cut the 'mountain of Baramoule to give an outlet to the waters. The fourth,that they fay, Moles died at Kachemire, and that his tomb is one league difhmtfrom this town. The fifth, that they pretend, that that little and very ancient edi-fice, which appears from hence upon an high mountain, was built by Solomon , andthat thence they call it to this very day the Throne of Solomon. So that I wouldnot deny, but that forae Jews may have penetrated hither; and that in length oftime they may have loft the purity of their law, turned idolaters, at laft Maho-metans. In fliort, we fee ftore of the Jewifh nation that have palled into Perfia to-Ear, Ifpahan, and alfo into Indoftan, on the fide of Goa and Cochin. I have beeninformed, that there were of them in ./Ethiopia , even gallant and military men, andfome of them fo confiderable and potent, that there was one of them, fifteen orfixteen years ago, that had attempted to make himfelf king of a little country of themountains of a very hard accefs ; if it be true, what two embalfadors of the king of./Ethiopia , that were lately in this court, related to me.
Anfiver to the fecond demand, about the fated rains in the Indies.
The fun is fo ftrong and violent in the Indies all the year long, and principally forthe fpace of eight months, that he would burn all, and render the country barren anduninhabitable, if providence had not particularly provided and difpofed things in fo ad-mirable a way, as in the month of July, when the heats are moft violent, rains begin,regularly to fail, which continuing for three months together, do temper the earth,mid render it very fruitful, and fo qualify the air that it may be endured. Yet are notthele rains fo regular, that they fail always juft at the fame time; of which I havemade many obfervations in different places, and principally at Dehli , where I lived a-long while. The like is found in other countries; and there is always fome differencein the time from year to year: for fometimes they begin or end a fortnight or three■weeks fooner, fometimes later ; and there are alfo fome years, in which they are notfo plentiful as in others; infomuch that two years together it did almoft not rain at all,,which caufed much ficknefs, and great famine. Befides, there is alio this difference,in refpeft of countries different and remote from one another ; that thele rains ordi-narily begin fooner, or are more plentiful in one than in the other. For example, inEengal and along the coaft of Coromandel, • as far as to the file of Ceilan, they beginand end a month fooner than towards the coaft of Malabar: and in Bengal thele rainsare pouring down for four months, and fometimes continue for eight days and nightstogether without intermiflion; whereas at 'Dehli and Agra they are never fo ftrong,nor fo durable, there palling fometimes two or three whole days without any rain ; andordinarily the w'hole morning, from break of day until about nine or ten o’clock, it.fains but very little or nothing. But the moft confiderable difference I have obferved,
that the rains in divers places come from different quarters of the world; as about